Let’s keep with the theme of world leaders breached by Facebook, Alex.
Jair Messias Bolsonaro.
Red hot, Alex. Let’s stay with this category. World leaders for $500. Have you been Zucked? 🇵🇰
Ok for $400, world leaders again. Have you been Zucked, 🇹🇷 ?
Ok, let’s go to our good friends north of the border, 🇨🇦. Recall Facebook argued with @CharlieAngusNDP, Canada didn’t even have jurisdiction. @beynate@AHousefather will be interested in this.
Last one in this category, we’ll head back across the pond to 🇬🇧.
Let’s move over to the category of Sports ⚽️ stars, Alex. For $500... sorry, @Cristiano.
Always a battle, Messi won’t be left out of being Zucked.
And let’s move to the most followed celebrity entertainers. @rihanna avoided the breach but not this female superstar.
Another widely followed pop music star of social media.
Will Smith, these are some of the most heavily followed people on the planet...on Facebook.
Snap. don’t fell my kids that Harry Potter’s email and phone number may be available from a data breach on Facebook?
Ok, one last Member of Congress. Considering Zuckerberg wouldn’t answer his awareness timeline of their previous largest breach, @aoc will want to know her recovery phone # and personal data may have been in this breach.
Ok, I’m done with my playing jeopardy to see who got caught up in this breach. Facebook called it *old news* but I bet you none of those world leaders and celebrities were informed they were swept up in it.
Alright folks. Yes, that site above ⬆️ was popped up recently so I didn’t link to it. If you want to check if you’re part of this breach or any others, highly recommend @haveibeenpwned, run by Troy Hunt. He just added phone #s as a lookup.
Woah.
Google is effectively trying to buy out the United States by tendering a cashier's check for the claimed max damages from screwing industry with adtech market power abuses. US DOJ's adtech antitrust trial seeking to break them up is months away. 1/4
And then with google's payment, they're trying to get it switched from jury to bench trial. The money is an after thought, what they clearly don't want is a jury of Americans reviewing damning evidence (see Bernanke) which may be harder to appeal leading to structural remedy. 2/4
lol, G. The lawsuit is smart for jury as U.S. explained Google's alleged abuse so Americans understand it by comparing G's market power on all sides to wall street. Hell, Google's own executive made this analogy "if Goldman or Citibank owned the NYSE."
A jury will get this. 3/4
Bam, clock starts. Facebook just filed its reply brief seeking cert from SCOTUS to reverse its early defeat to dismiss a Cambridge Analytica case. This comes 6+ years after Facebook began laundering press using exhaustion and complexity to whitewash facts of the scandal. /1
But let's start with preposterous argument from Facebook's amici allies as it's also Facebook's core argument to SCOTUS. Facebook argues the scandal was already widely known in 2015. So no reason to disclose in its SEC risk factors in 2016 or 2017 (when it was covering it up!) /2
Let's turn to the opposition which has really pinned down the facts over time correcting press mistakes. They call Facebook out directly on their bad argument. One that would require belief that the stock dropped for other reasons in 2018 when it finally became widely known. /3
Department of Justice has now posted its hundreds of great slides from closing arguments. I’ll share 13 slides that tell story imho captured by this list.
First, if search defaults don’t matter, why pay approx $30B, 40% of revenue to maintain them? 1/13
DOJ cleverly took this sentence from the DC circuit opinion in U.S. vs Microsoft and replaced it with Google’s search defaults story in red. “Fits like a glove” as they said to Court on Friday. Hard to argue. 2/13
The story on importance of Google’s data harvesting to monopoly maintenance was crystal clear so let’s move on to how DOJ alleges Google was able to use its market power to impact ad prices which drive much of their revenues. 3/13
There is a report going around Apple is going to facilitate blocking of ads in Safari - it deserves your attention. Meanwhile, I want to connect dots w/ a number of redactions lifted (yellow) late last night in the post-trial docs of US v Google - closing arguments are tmw. /1
It's critical to understand the importance of Safari to their Google deal under microscope. It's reasonable to say Safari delivers nearly 20% of Apple's Income from Ops almost entirely subsidized by Google. Without Safari, there is no Google deal. /2
As the expert witness in the trial pointed out, there isn't a rational explanation for a 40% revenue share on traffic that Google's proxies argue would happen without Apple. But hey, maybe that cash also pays for special influence into Safari's roadmap, too? /3
!!!!! just unsealed, and higher than prior news reports. /1
we learned last Fall in a different G lawsuit (NdCal) during widely reported testimony the number 36% as the share Google paid Apple to be locked in as default search across Apple's surfaces.
But now this was just unsealed from the two key contracts (here is 2014 which even then was 37.5%) /2
Whoa. Facebook had a secret "Project Ghostbusters" (get it?) which allegedly was to decrypt "man-in-the-middle" style Snapchat traffic to copy it. Yellow highlight indicates redactions just lifted in nine unsealed plaintiffs briefs in private antitrust lawsuit. Wild stuff. /1
A lot of new stuff. There was lots of reporting (including Apple threats to boot Facebook) at the time on Facebook's software and Onavo acquisition allowing it to "spy" on competitive apps but I recall the decryption was written as a hypothetical. CEO email kickstarting it. /2
You can read the press back in Jan 2019 spoon fed by Facebook PR to friendlies with no mentions of decrypting SSL then compare to this internal email below sent to Facebook's most senior executives - "currently includes SSL decryption"... /3